WITH THE CREDITS still rolling and the house lights barely back on, Cinema Seven of Busan's Megabox Cineplex descends into pandemonium, with photographers jockeying for a prime vantage point. The scene isn't uncommon at the Pusan International Film Festival, but the object of this particular scrum is. Emerging from the wings is an unassuming, portly 25-year-old, clad in a windbreaker, jeans and glasses.
Filmmaker Leste Chen might not be the embodiment of style, but his Eternal Summer is a visually ravishing piece, and stars three of today's most photogenic twentysomething actors.
The film charts the rites of passage of three high-school friends and their sexual awakening in a repressive society. They form a love triangle, with Jonathan (Bryant Chang Jui-chia) lacking the courage to confess his passion for his long-time friend, the macho wild-child Shane (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan). Their ambivalent bond is disrupted by the arrival of Carrie (Kate Yeung Kei), who falls for Jonathan. He rebuffs her advances and tells her his true love, and Carrie turns to the smitten Shane behind Jonathan's back. The secrets and lies all serve as the build-up to the film's climax.
Eternal Summer has been hailed as the Taiwanese high school answer to Brokeback Mountain - Chen's film opens this year's Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, which begins today - but he's quick to emphasise that Eternal Summer is more than just a film about same-sex romance.
'This isn't a film about how a man falls in love with another man,' says Chen. 'What I want to say reaches across genders - it's about the ambivalence of friendship. When I was in high school, I also had very important male friends whose opinions and support meant everything to me, and whose presence would immediately calm my fears. It's what Jonathan's struggle is about, the way he struggles with the nature of his feelings.'
Chen says that what he wants to convey is the repressive environment in which Taiwanese youngsters grow up - and how this produces a generation that finds it difficult to articulate its hopes, fears and desires. 'Apart from the typhoons and earthquakes, one of the events that has created a lot of turbulence in Taiwan is the purported educational reforms,' he says.